Presence of Metabolic Syndrome in Football Linemen (Original Research) (Clinical Report‪)‬

Recent authors (1-4) have demonstrated that football linemen are obese according to body mass index (BMI) measures. It may be tempting to discount these reports because of the inappropriate application of BMI in athletes, but football linemen may not be as healthy as we presume them to be, and closer evaluation of these large athletes for metabolic syndrome is needed. Metabolic syndrome (MetSyn) is typically defined as a clustering of clinical symptoms associated with increased abdominal adiposity and includes negative health correlates such as high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, impaired glucose metabolism, and possibly elevated inflammatory and prothrombotic makers. (5) Clustering of MetSyn abnormalities increases the risk of coronary heart disease and diabetes. (6-8) The physique of football linemen can be consistent with increased body and abdominal fat stores, (9) which may be associated with the presence of MetSyn. Football linemen often seek advice for a weight gain routine (diet and weight training), with the goal of becoming larger than their opponents. (10) Ideally, the increased body weight would be increased muscle mass, but often players increase their body size by accumulating more adipose tissue, specifically in the abdominal region. In our experience as athletic trainers and sports nutritionists, some athletes are indifferent to the composition of the weight gain; they just want to be immovable and more competitive with large opponents.